Sharing Knowledge

Sharing knowledge is something I have always liked doing. When I learn something new I like to share it with others. Sharing knowledge helps reinforce what I have learned while hopefully helping the person I am sharing the information with. We have all been taught that sharing is caring.

What I was not taught is that not everyone I share my knowledge with wants to hear it. Ever been training in a gym and a guy comes up and tells you your performing the exercise wrong? He then goes on to show and explain the “correct way”. He maybe right or completely wrong but your first instinct is to dismiss what he is telling you. Why?

You learned how to perform the exercise when you were wanting to learn. The information you found maybe correct, partially correct, or completely wrong. Regardless you feel you have the answer and are no longer seeking to learn how to perform the exercise. Someone telling you that you’re doing the exercise wrong is immediately rejected or resisted. We do not like to be wrong. We like to think what we know is correct, we do not hold onto information that is wrong.

Now you might be more open to this sharing of knowledge if the person telling you is a trainer or jacked person at the gym. The reason is they might know more than the original person you got your information from. People tend to be willing learn from people with education in that area or they have impressive personal results. For the most part though I think people are only receptive to new information when they come seeking knowledge. Once they have that information they are no longer interested in the knowledge you are trying to share.

Knowing this and actually refraining from sharing my knowledge when talking to people has been hard for me. Nutrition and training are a passion for me so its very hard to keep that under wraps when I stumble across people who are doing similar things. I have a tendency to puke out all the information I have ever learned about that particular subject. The reason I am telling you this is because I want to share an experience I had yesterday.

The Experience

Yesterday I was talking an all day course and during the break one of the instructors told me she had brought in her own cookies. She said she has been on a diet since the beginning of the year. I asked how much weight she had lost and she told me 25 lbs. That’s great! I said. I stated I think most people are good at losing weight but not so great at keeping it off. She told me she was trying a new diet called keto. I told her as a natural bodybuilder I have tried a variety of diets, including keto and the key is to find one that works for you. I told her I personally prefer a diet higher in carbs because it helps with my training. She told me carbs cause your insulin to spike which makes you fat.

Now of course this is completely untrue and I wanted to correct her but I stopped myself. I realized she was not seeking knowledge. She was doing a diet she had researched and wanted to try. She was seeing results, and she was happy. Trying to share my knowledge was not going to work because she was not looking for answers, plus I had zero credibility with her. I was pretty happy with myself for recognizing this and just letting it go.

I think its much easier to do that with people you are never going to see again but its a start. Friends and family are far tougher because you want to see them do well. You would hope you have a bit more credibility with them but that’s not always the case. My experience though is that because they are not coming to you asking questions they are not open to learning. There is an old saying “When the student is ready the teacher appears” which is what I believe means until the person is willing to be a student (learn) no teacher can teach (share knowledge).